


Its A Real Artificial Heart

by orphan_account



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Arc Reactor Angst, I love you really, My heart is aching, Oh Tony BBY, Stream of Consciousness, Tony Angst, Tony Feels, Tony Has Issues, Why do I do this to myself, but Christ you're so fucking depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>There's blood on the bed but here in my head I'm feeling fine<br/>It's easy to sleep when I'm not buzzing all the time<br/>So funny the way I was before<br/>Once I was blind but now I see<br/>Once I was him but now he's me</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Its A Real Artificial Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Jonathan Coulton's [Artificial Heart](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMJXlBDK6XI), which is the most Tonyest Tony song ever in my head, I mean Christ. Seriously. Have you heard it?
> 
> Anyway, this is honestly me just having lots of Tony feels and venting a bit. Practice guess?

All his life, Tony has been judged.

It’s not something that has ever changed. From going out with friends to sitting at home reading a book to building missiles at age fifteen, everything has always been a test set by the media or his disappointed father, by his sceptical professors, his so-called friends all waiting for him to fail, so they could be proven right, that Tony Stark was nothing.

But despite that, and because he was a stubborn bastard, he kept going. 

He kept going, though he allowed himself to sink into a pool of depression and alcohol and sex, letting his life go by in a blur, hiding in the glamour that came with being a Stark. He kept going, building weapons and being an ass and taunting his competitors, rising to the top of his game. He kept going up until he waltzed into Afghanistan and was gunned down after watching three young soldiers be killed because of him, by his own weapons. 

And then there was the Day. The Day when he had woken up and found that thing embedded in his chest, his ears picking up on the whine of the car battery, the low hum of Yinsen shaving, the distant sound of harsh voices in a language he didn’t understand.

Lying in the semi-darkness, the only light from the piece of rusty machinery in his chest, there was no way to tell the time. For the first few (Days? Weeks?) he just lay there, staring, clutching the battery against his chest, the only interruptions when he was dragged away to the water. Yinsen had stopped trying to talk to him after a few attempts, leaving him alone.

He found that all he could think about was the circle in his torso where he no longer had human flesh.

 

After.

That was what it became. The After that was so much better than the Before, but so much worse at the same time. He no longer cruised along in a dream of booze and sex. He was sober, and not only from lack of alcohol. He finally could see the damage he had done by simply existing, and was at a loss as to how he had spent so much time so blissfully unaware of everything. He wanted to go back to that, even for only a short while, so he did the only thing that he knew that could at least give the illusion of ignorance.

He drank.

Again he became immobile, though this time he was in his workshop rather than a cave, and it was the whirring of his robots’ wheels, the soft murmur of JARVIS that comforted him, rather than the low tones of Yinsen, who would never speak again. But the buzz was still there. 

He looked down at the arc reactor, tentatively tapping a beat on it. This was the mechanical marvel that kept him alive, but closed off so many of his opportunities. There was a metaphor there somewhere, of the seeing the light, never being able to be in total darkness again, but Tony was not maudlin or drunk enough to voice it. Yet.

 

The armour turned out to be a replacement for alcohol. He loved it for that. He loved that he could put it on and not be Tony Stark for a while, to be free for the first time in his life of the burden and the sheer pressure that came with the name. .

It was so strange, how Before he had been Tony Stark, how it had seemed fine and wonderful and he reminded himself he was better off than so many people, but now that he was Iron Man as well, he realized how much easier it would be Tony Stark just… Stopped. Just ceased to exist. If he could just be Iron Man all the time, life would be so much simpler. It was funny how quickly he went from being Tony Stark who was also Iron Man to being Iron Man who was also Tony Stark.

He liked it that way.

 

And then it was killing him.  
And Pepper wouldn’t let him say goodbye.

And Rhodey had betrayed him.

He was dying. 

 

Of course it didn’t work out between him and Pepper.

He knew it wouldn’t. People didn’t like Tony Stark, people shouldn’t like Tony Stark. But he was a selfish man who didn’t know how to let go.

She had already been gone for a long time, but now she was engaged, to Happy of all people. Oh course he wasn’t begrudging them, he was glad for them, but it was just another reminder of how fucking lonely he was. But it was better he stayed alone, because if not people hurt him, betrayed him, and he hurt them and made them bleed. 

 

He was in a hospital. He doesn’t remember how he got there, but he’s in so much pain, it's burning through him, screaming, yelling, all except around his chest, where it's numb and dead. He tilts his head and sees his team, the Avengers, peering anxiously at him. The wall behind them is amazingly white, blindingly so. He finds that he is staring at the paint instead of at him teammates’ faces. He doesn’t move his gaze though. 

He hears someone state that he was awake in amazement. In that moment of drowsiness and pain, as he’s slipping back into unconsciousness, he thinks that he wish he wasn’t. He doesn’t know if he said it out loud or not, but from the looks that he’s vaguely aware his comrades share, he assumes he did.

He can’t bring himself to care.

 

Tony finds himself wondering how human he actually is. It’s ridiculous. He knows this on some level. It’s not actually his heart that is mechanical. But that’s what people always assume. And it might as well be his heart. Without it, the organ would be pierced by the shrapnel and stop. He would die.

Does that make him more machine than man?

He’s not sure.

He thinks it does though.


End file.
